Portuguese

Olá!

Portugal has a population of just over 10 million, so why is Portuguese spoken by 250 million people around the world? One word: Brazil. It is also the official language of eight countries: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guine-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tome and Príncipe. It is also spoken in the Portuguese islands of Madeiras and Azores… if you're thinking of heading that way.

Portuguese is the third most spoken European language (after English and Spanish) as well as the fastest growing language of Europe (with Spanish). Brazil is currently the 5th largest economy in the world. It therefore makes sense in the global economy to study Portuguese.

Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are pretty similar, like American English and British English. Portuguese is surprisingly different from Spanish, as you will learn, although the languages are close enough that native speakers can often understand each other.

Whether you are planning to visit the Algarve or the Amazon, or the Rio 2016 Olympic Games a working knowledge of Portuguese will be a boon!

Modern Languages at Leicester, part of the School of Arts, offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees combining French, Spanish and Italian with each other and with other academic subjects. We also offer degrees in translation and interpreting.